Voting systems have been around for hundreds of years and despite different views on their integrity, have always been deemed secure systems with some fundamental security and anonymity principles. Numerous electronic systems have been proposed and implemented but some suspicion has been raised regarding the integrity of elections due to detected security vulnerabilities within these systems. Electronic voting, to be successful, requires a more transparent and secure approach,than the approach that is offered by current protocols. The approach presented in this paper involves a protocol developed on blockchain technology. The underlying technology used in the voting system is a payment scheme, which offers anonymity of transactions, a trait not seen in blockchain protocols to date. The proposed protocol offers anonymity of voter transactions, while keeping the transactions private and the election transparent...

n this paper, we explore the design and construct a prototype implementation of an Ethereum application, BMCProtector, which is based on Blockchain and Smart Contract technology, to protect music copyright and ensure rights holders income rights. With the blockchain, musicians can easily authorize and manage their music copyright on a public ledger. Without intermediaries being involved during the propagation process, rights holders can receive a greater share of royalty payments from the music industry automatically and instantly. We deal with piracy issues using encryption and watermarking methods. We also introduce a versioning mechanism to update the data in the smart contract for correcting mistakes made by the publisher. BMCProtector provides a solution to protect music copyright more effectively.

35th EGOS Colloquium: Enlightening the Future: The Challenge for Organizations, University of Edinburgh Business School, Edinburgh, UK, July 4–6, 2019The internet architecture, usage, and culture have always been defined by openness. Since its inception in the late decades of the Cold War, internet designers made any node of this digital network equal and capable of bridging new nodes without the need of anyone else’s approval. This way, the formation of single points of failure is avoided because nodes can always be added, and communications can always be rerouted through alternative nodes. This principle of resilience – which assumes that centers are easy targets, thus weak links, rather than strongholds – was intended to prevent the emergence of hierarchies among nodes and priorities among messages. So, Soviet attacks could hit any node but never paralyze the entirety of this network of military communication. The persistent defense of network openness – still visible in the...

In this paper, we propose a distributed market
mechanism powered by the blockchain technology addressing
network ownership models in multiple telecommunications networks
use cases. The proposed model is based on the smart
contract technology and enables transparent and trusted bilateral
trades, where trust among the network operators does not exist,
and there is no impartial third-party entity who is trusted by
all of the participants. We use an open source permissioned
blockchain framework called Hyperledger Fabric to investigate
the performance of the distributed market mechanism in cloud
environments. After running experiments on Hyperledger Fabric,
we discuss the practical feasibility and possible design choices
of our blockchain approach based on latency, throughput and
resource consumption analysis.

The application of blockchain technology to the energy sector promises to derive new operating models focused on local generation and sustainable practices, which are driven by peer-to-peer collaboration and community engagement. However, real-world energy blockchains differ from typical blockchain networks insofar as they must interoperate with grid infrastructure, adhere to energy regulations, and embody engineering principles. Naturally, these additional dimensions make real-world energy blockchains highly dependent on the participation of grid operators, engineers, and energy providers. Although much theoretical and proof-of-concept research has been published on energy blockchains, this research aims to establish a lens on real-world projects and implementations that may inform the alignment of academic and industry research agendas. This research classifies 131 real-world energy blockchain initiatives to develop an understanding of how blockchains are being applied to the ener...

The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review of blockchain hardware acceleration. Blockchain technology has achieved significant attention in recent years particularly in the area of cryptocurrency however it is gaining popularity in other applications such as supply chain management and e-government. Based on a structured, systematic review of the relevant literature, we present a classification of the primary areas in blockchain technology that make use of heterogeneous hardware for accelerating certain blockchain functions. Based on these findings, we identify various research gaps and future exploratory directions that are anticipated to be of significant value both for academics and industry practitioners.

The emergence of e-commerce has changed the way people trade. However, merchants are charged high fees for their use of the platform and for payment services. These costs are passed on to customers in the form of higher prices. Blockchain technology can provide lower transaction fees with high security and privacy level but is incapable of delivering the number of transactions per second demanded by real e-commerce. Establishing a layer above the blockchain to manage transactions which we called Blockchain Layer2 technology, has the potential to solve these issues. In this article, we focus on the effect that layer2 technology can provide in reducing fee costs and improving transaction volumes. We introduce the problems that the e-commerce industry is facing currently and how blockchain layer2 technology can help to address these issues. We list and describe the main layer2 mechanisms based on the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains. We ...

This chapter steps back from specific empirical cases and discusses alternative theoretical lenses that can be used to study if and how blockchain-based registries in Africa will be affecting organizations and society. Those lenses are: Neoinstitutionalism, Structuration theory, and Actor-Network theory. Each of them is adopted to outline aspects of blockchain first, then to highlight specificities in Ghana, finally to suggest research lines. This plurality of theoretical lenses encourages to foster a more nuanced understanding of unconventional contexts of technology in use, thus to derive better recommendations than those based on reductionist frameworks, which often overlook specificities of developing countries.Peer-review status unspecifiedItem not published - ACCheckdate added to check for published version - AC18 month embargo once published - AC

This paper provides an overview of historic and current organizational limitations emerging in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Building Owner / Operations (AECOO) Industry. It then provides an overview of new technologies that attempt to mitigate these limitations. However, these technologies, taken together, appear to be converging and creating entirely new organizational structures in the AEC industries. This may be characterized by the emergence of what is called the Network Effect and it’s related calculus. This paper culminates with an introduction to Blockchain Technology (BT) and it’s integration with the emergence of groundbreaking technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Financial / Insurance products. To illustrate this process, we use choose Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology as our model network database for the AECOO industry. Interaction with the BIM database is an activity that gen...

The 9th International Conference in Critical Management Studies: Is there an alternative? Management After Critique, University of Leicester, United Kingdom, 8-10 July, 2015This conference invites us to explore new organisational forms and practices that might be alternatives to 'neoliberal market managerialism' and 'financial capitalism'. Our starting point is that the latter two phenomena cannot be separated off analytically from powerful actors — such as the state — that have co-emerged with and played a key role in the evolutionary process through which capitalism has come to be (Graeber 2011). Specifically, this paper takes its move from Hobbes’s (1651/2005) idea of the Leviathan, which has provided a foundational intellectual basis for the nation-state form, which is today ubiquitous, and on which both neoliberalism and financial capitalism are reliant. Hobbes rooted his construct in a pessimistic view of humankind that is naturally inclined towards th...

Information technology (IT) innovation is rapidly reshaping organisations,
affecting fundamental aspects of their everyday business activities and processes. This
development is accompanied by benefits as well as challenges. In this article, we focus on a
specific distributed ledger IT called blockchain which has been heralded as possessing the
capability to radically transform a multitude of industries. However, there is a dearth of
research which has coalesced the important considerations that organisations should consider
prior to adopting blockchain technologies. Consequently, using innovation theory, which has
been extensively used to examine the adoption of IT in organisations, we identify salient
technological, organisational and environmental (TOE) considerations which influence the
adoption of blockchain by organisations. We anchor our discussion using the top three
organisational considerations which emerged from our research: top management support,
organisational readine...

University of Zurich, Department of Informatics IFI Colloquium, Zurich, Switzerland, 28th February 2019Information technologies have been changing how things get organized for a while now. Free and open source software, peer-to-peer networks, cloud computing, just to name a few waves of digital innovation, are instances of a mode of organizing which has been: a) circumventing the structures and conventions of formal organizations, and b) changing and disrupting markets while opening new ones. The most recent trend of digital innovation is blockchain, which embeds functions that used to be domain of organizations: consensus and authentication. Cryptocurrencies proved at scale the feasibility of an architecture that certifies each token on a network and differentiates it from all others. All copies are the same no more. This newly created scarcity originates both cooperation to keep the system running reliably, and rivalry between actors longing for a finite number of tokens. Thu...

This letter proposes a novel demurrage mechanism for blockchain electricity marketplaces, whereby the redemptive value of energy-backed tokens declines with time. This mechanism is intended to reward organic price-responsive load shifting by incentivising the consumption of electricity when it is locally abundant. To demonstrate how such a demurrage mechanism might function in practice, this letter describes a mixed complementarity model of a notional token marketplace. These market simulations indicate that, in equilibrium and with rational actors, the demurrage mechanism creates price signals that temporally align the production and consumption of electricity.Science Foundation Ireland

Blockchain technology is ready to disrupt nearly every industry and business model, and the energy sector is no exception. Energy businesses across the world have already started exploring the use of blockchain technology in large-scale energy trading systems, peer-to-peer energy trading, project financing, supply chain tracking, and asset management among other applications. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) recently started revolutionizing the energy landscape, and now blockchain technology is providing an additional opportunity to make the energy system more intelligent, efficient, transparent, and secure in the longer term. The idea of this paper is to examine more closely the use of blockchain technology for its possible application in the energy efficiency industry and to determine how it could make energy efficiency markets more secure and transparent in the longer term. This paper examines in detail the key benefits and implications of using blockchain in the...

Even with advances in modern GSM technologies there remains situations where increased data compression rates can be valuable (Dantas, Exton, and Le Gear, 2018). While the adoption of 4G networks is increasing, there is still a significant portion of the world’s mobile devices connected through less capable 2G or 3G networks.
We propose that with recent developments in speech-to-text technology, devices are now capable of correctly transcribing speech samples with enough precision to be used for telecommunications. Our initial experiments demonstrate that it is possible to achieve significantly greater compression rates by converting speech into text streams when compared to current voice codecs. Such text streams could also be further compressed using traditional text compression algorithms like Huffman encoding (Huffman, 1952).
We also propose that Blockchain technology (Nakamoto, 2008) could bring authentication functionality to a text-to-speech compressed VoIP call that would ...

The second-hand automotive market is one with the least trust from consumers. Customers on the second-hand car market suffer from such problems as the car being in worse condition than initially indicated, accident damage that is not disclosed, fraud, etc. Akerlof, described the market for used cars as an example of the problem of information asymmetries and resulting quality uncertainty. In order to cope with quality uncertainties, used car buyers actively engage themselves in information seeking. Blockchain technology promises to automatize the tracking of cars through their lifecycles and provide reliable information at any point in time it is needed. In our study, we investigate the problems car buyers face during information seeking and propose requirements for the design of a blockchain-based system to address these.University College DublinUpdate citation details during checkdate report - AC12 month embargo once published

Attaining consensus with no constraints on the consensus participation is a fundamental feature of decentralized blockchain solutions such as Bitcoin (Nakamoto, 2008) and Ethereum (Buterin et al., 2013). Unrestricted consensus participation removes the possibility of censorship and a potential single point of failure, but this design has led to a new concern: that of centralization. Centralization in decentralized blockchain refers to the concentration of a large portion of computing resources to a select few participants. In this paper, we identify the restriction on new participation as a critical contributor to the centralization of consensus power towards commercial and large-scale entities. We also examine the cause of the indirect restriction on participation and propose a metric to identify the degree of these indirect restrictions. This new metric may be used as a threat indicator to identify the centralization of decentralized blockchain caused by indirect participation res...

There has been significant recent interest in local electricity trading platforms, and particularly in the application of distributed ledger and blockchain technology for distributed, or peer-to-peer energy trading in local energy communities. Several projects worldwide have demonstrated this concept on a small scale in Low Voltage (LV) distribution networks and microgrids. However, previous work in this area has not sufficiently addressed the potential impacts of peer-to-peer energy trading and other local electricity trading mechanisms on the control, operation and planning of the electricity distribution networks. Accordingly, this paper presents a methodology for the co-simulation of power distribution networks and local peer-to-peer energy trading platforms. The distribution system simulator is interfaced with a peer-to-peer energy trading platform, which employs a blockchain-based distributed double auction trade mechanism. The presented co-simulation approach is demonstrated ...

In this paper we use the blockchain technology to develop a peer to peer energy trade platform without a trusted third party. Our main contribution is a novel distributed double auction mechanism which allows any peer to act as an auctioneer and the blockchain mechanism ensures that a peer behaves lawfully while acting as an auctioneer. Using experimental evaluation we show that (1) the distributed auction converges quickly, (2) it minimizes energy loss due to long transmission, (3) computational overhead due to employing a blockchain is negligible, (4) it is efficient and (5) it can implement trade restrictions imposed by the energy distribution network.

Since the emergence of the internet, the growth and development of communication technologies have presented new opportunities for collaboration. Practitioners in almost every industry can now collaborate with the skilled personnel across a range of fields, regardless of their geographic location. This contemporary working arrangement is referred to as Distributed Collaboration, which I define as the pursuit of a shared objective by groups that include non-proximate members, whose participation is facilitated by ICT. However, Distributed Collaboration is not without drawbacks. The dispersed and volatile nature of numerous participants makes these groups vulnerable to many challenges, primarily, free-riding, production blocking, evaluation apprehension, and perceptions of fairness. Meanwhile, Blockchain technology has emerged over the last decade, initially to facilitate the cryptocurrency market. However, research interest has recently focused on its potential to support non-financi...

Climate change represents a serious threat to the health of our planet and imposed a discussion upon energy waste and production. In this paper we propose a smart grid architecture relying on blockchain technology aimed at discouraging the production and distribution of non-renewable energy as the one derived from fossil fuel. Our model relies on a reverse application of a recently introduced attack to the blockchain based on chain forking. Our system involves both a central authority and a number of distributed peers representing the stakeholders of the energy grid. This system preserves those advantages derived from the blockchain and it also address some limitations such as energy waste for mining operations. In addition, the reverse attack we rely on allows to mitigate the behavior of a classic blockchain, which is intrinsecally self-regulated, and to trigger a sort of ethical action which penalizes non-renewable energy producers. Blacklisted stakeholders will be induced to prov...

The 40th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2019), Munich, Germany, 15-18 December 2019Blockchain technology provides a distributed ledger and is based on a logic of peer to peer authentication. It gained prominence with the rise of cryptocurrencies but provides a much broader field of possible applications. While it has been originally closely linked to a libertarian agenda rejecting organizations, its developments have illustrated that this ideological framing is being reversed in practice. Based on contrastive empirical cases, the purpose of our paper is to discuss blockchain as an organizational technology. Its peculiar mode of governance, which we name ‘Hanseatic’, needs to mediate between the fluidity typical of Free and Open Source Software development and the immutability that use organizations adopt blockchain for.University College DublinEmbargo until conference concludes - ACCheck for published version during checkdate report - AC

Proof Of Work Blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum exhibit a low Transaction Per Second (TPS) that impacts the scalability of the blockchain. Manipulating the block creation time can yield a higher TPS. A lower block creation rate results in a higher Stale Block rate that has a direct impact on the security of blockchain. We intend on using a novel Proof of Work Classification model under a varying level of difficulty to classify an instance of blockchain with a threshold (Block-time) on the basis of it’s resilience to selfish mining and double-spending attacks. Use of an ideal block creation time can help Proof of Work blockchains scale and attain a higher TPS without trading off security. The classification model can further be extended to find an optimal block-size.

Research carried out at NUI Galway has found a 40% blockchain adoption rate among Irish enterprises to date. The study investigated why implementation in Ireland is relatively low, and proposes recommendations to increase blockchain awareness and adoption that can provide opportunities not only for economic growth but also create a new foundation for how Irish organisations and government conduct business.